October 2012 Archive for PFA Pioneer Blog

GOP Candidate Mitt Romney delivered a speech this week at an Iowa farm near Van Meter. As is the case for most would-be presidents, he was short on farm policy specifics; that will largely depend upon the personnel he selects if he becomes president. (We have a feeling he’d pick someone with closer ties to agriculture than an ag secretary who was born in Pittsburgh or a deputy secretary who studied environmental policy at MIT and worked as an assistant professor and director of the Ag, Food and Environment graduate program at a Boston university.)

Romney criticized the Obama administration’s “disregard” for the concerns of rural America as reflected by “tax increases and onerous regulations, to a stalled trade agenda, to efforts that drive up the cost of energy.”
Romney’s rural agenda includes implementing effective tax policies, expanding trade, creating a regulatory environment that is “commonsense and cost effective” and achieving energy independence in the U.S. by 2020. He also expressed support for the Renewable Fuels Standard.

Prior to the event, Romney released a 14-page ag position paper that provides more farm policy specifics and he unveiled his Iowa Farmers for Romney coalition. It will be led by Iowa GOP Ag Secretary Bill Northey and former Farm Bureau leaders Dean Kleckner and Craig Lang, Senator Charles Grassley, Representatives Steve King and Tom Latham and an advisory panel made up of more than 70 rural activists and spouses.

A court recently vacated the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s position limit rule that was part of the Dodd-Frank Act. Following the ruling, CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton urged the agency to immediately appeal the ruling and quickly move forward with a new plan.

Chilton says position limits are necessary because an influx in managed money has flowed into the U.S. commodity futures market (a $200-billion increase between 2005 and 2008), creating “an unprecedented link between financial markets and commodity markets.”

These speculators trade futures like stocks rather than futures, in that they “park” their money and “bet” prices will rise over the long-term, with little concern about short-term price fluctuations, Chilton says. His major concern is that their sheer size enables them to move markets.

While Chilton acknowledges these speculators are necessary in the market, he also says they create a “speculative premium on commodity prices… that shouldn’t be allowed.” He believes speculative position limits “across all physical commodity derivatives” would be a step toward ensuring commodity markets operate properly.